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On Aug 20, 2012, at 10:03 AM, "Chuck Grimes" <cagrimes42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Was it Berlin de Maistre who counted the term counter enlightenment? Have you read Hirshman's great book on reactionary rhetoric?
>>
> ----------
>
> Yes, Berlin on de Maistre over the idea that value systems change with time and place. But there is a conflict of interpretation. Cassirer also studied de Maistre and took the same interpretation to come to a different and more radical (progressive) view. So there is an issue of scholarship to resolve---which would require a bunch of work like reading de Maistre.
>
> No, haven't read Hirshman. Need a title, filed for future reference. I got sick to
> death of trying to sort out this gobbledy gook.
>
> It was (is) a lot more fun to take the time to read Trotsky. It took nearly two weeks of day long reading to get through 1500 pages. But it was more than worth it. My Life is much shorter, but also on line. I bought the Eastman trans of HoTRR. My Life is much more personal and overlaps the former. His tales of exile have a great sense of bitter humor as he escapes Siberia for the second time travelling nearly a thousand miles toward the Urals by northern route via reindeer slay in dead winter. From there he picks up rail lines to reach St Petersberg only a few days after the local papers report his arrival in Siberia. Lots of adventure follows him to Vienna where he picks up jobs writing for the Russian emigre press.
>
> Meanwhile he and his wife have two boys who are moved around with them. Some of these passages are touching, beautiful, tender, nice to read after his tremendously harsh political rhetoric.
>
> I realize it is certainly late in life to discover Trotsky. But as I wrote in another post, I wouldn't have been ready in prior eras of just slow mildrew and political rot. It took white hot chaos since Bush and the great collapse along with the reversals of O and the Arab revolutions, all as yet unfinished.
>
> CG
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